Archive for the politics Category

Even the people who aren’t fooled by Sarah Palin are still fooled by Sarah Palin. We, er, they are going to talk and speculate and talk some more about will-she or won’t-she run for President. This will go on ad nausea for most of 2011. All while she’ll soak up way too much attention from the “lame-stream media,” cuz all press is good press, and whatever moves the ratings needle and whatever keeps her in, near, or around political news and pop culture will help her sell more books and land new TV gigs and make her more money on the speech circuit.

She’ll make TV appearances, and ridiculous comments, and her stupid talking points will continue to drive the national conversation despite the fact that even leading conservatives and republicans know she’s unqualified and unelectable. But that stuff is easy. Running for (let alone being) President is not. So she won’t do it. She’s lazy.

So she’ll ride the wave of speculation all the way to her eventual destiny as the White Trash Oprah. And she’ll stroke her ego by holding out her eventual endorsement of one of the Republican candidates as long as possible, as if she’s some sort of kingmaker. But she won’t run for President.

Can anyone explain to me all the hemming and hawing by both the media and government/law enforcement officials about whether to use the word “terrorism” to describe Joseph Stack’s suicide crashing of a plane into a government building?

You know damn well if his name was Mohammed Al-Something or Jheet M’Droors that it would be Terrorism. But no, this was an American white guy named Andrew Joseph Stack. Well darn if that name doesn’t sound more “Presidential” than Barack Hussein Obama.

The Associated Press reported that “Police in Austin, Texas, say the crash of a small plane into a building that houses the IRS is an isolated incident and not an act of terrorism.” Really? THE GUY PURPOSELY CRASHED A PLANE INTO A GOVERNMENT BUILDING. He also left a manifesto/note with such gems as “violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer” and “Nothing changes unless there is a body count.” How is that not terrorism?

Another news report noted, “The FBI launched an investigation and Rep. Michael McCaul, a Republican from Austin on the Homeland Security Committee, said the panel will take up the issue of how to better protect buildings from attacks with planes.” Yea? We’re gonna launch an investigation and have some panel take a little gander at this all-new out-of-the-blue idea of crazies attacking buildings with planes? Cuz that hasn’t happen since this one obscure time on September 11, 2001 when planes were crashed into those tower thingies and the Penta-something. Might want to look into that…

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported this nice little backtracking from White House spokesman Robert Gibbs by saying he “initially said that the incident did not appear to be related to terrorism but later said that he meant that it appeared not to be a foreign-based plot by a group such as al-Qaeda. He declined to rule out the possibility that the crash was a case of domestic terrorism.” Yea, he declined to rule out the possibility that maybe this coulda possibly been, y’know, umm, something sorta related to that thing that only Muslims usually do. Starts with a T.

Of course, when that guy opened fire at Fort Hood, that was definitely Terrorism cuz his name was Nidal Hasan.

It’s ironic that this country’s media and government LOVE to label anything and everything Terrorism if and when it will help their ratings or their political agenda. But when it comes with a white face and a “normal” name they all scratch their heads like they’ve just seen a unicorn.

Really Congressman? You fucking yelled out during a speech by the President of the United States while he was addressing Congress on national TV?

“You lie!” is what you screamed? You inconsiderate, disrespectful piece of shit. Why do you hate America? Here was President Barack Obama, trying to debunk all the bullshit lies and myths being spread by your side (all the garbage about death panels and insuring illegal aliens, etc.) and you disturb the proceedings by screaming? How old are you? How unprofessional are you? You should be ashamed of yourself. And you should shut the fuck up and love your country and respect the President (as the rest of us were repeatedly told to do during the previous 8 years).

I’m having a hard time understanding why President Barack Obama (he’s the President of the United States, the American President) shouldn’t be allowed to give a speech to school children all about the importance of education and staying in school.

Amazingly, I am not making up these quotes: “Thinking about my kids in school having to listen to that just really upsets me,” a suburban Colorado mother, Shanneen Barron, told KMGH-TV in Denver. Sounds like they were going to be forced to listen some evil satanic rock music or some lewd, profanity-laced comedy routine.

Then she added: “I’m an American. They are Americans, and I don’t feel that’s OK. I feel very scared to be in this country with our leadership right now.”

Memo to Mrs. Barron: Barack Obama is also an American. He’s the President, as I mentioned there at the top. We had 8 years of George W. Bush: asleep at the wheel while 9/11 was planned and carried out; still napping in the aftermath of Katrina; knowingly lying us into a war of choice that didn’t keep us safer and wasted trillions of dollars; approving and carrying out TORTURE and suspending Habeus Corpus (Google it Mrs. Barron); and illegally spying on innocent Americans through warrant-less wiretapping. But NOW you’re “very scared to be in this country with our leadership”??

And it’s not just some ignorant uninformed citizen making these ridiculous statements. The Chairman of the Florida Republican Party actually accused Obama of using taxpayer money to indoctrinate children. “As the father of four children, I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama’s socialist ideology,” Greer said. Really Mr. Greer? As a human being, I am absolutely appalled that you are the chairman of anything semi-official. And the S-word again?

“The idea that schoolchildren across our nation will be forced to watch the president justify his plans … is not only infuriating but goes against beliefs of the majority of Americans, while bypassing American parents through an invasive abuse of power.”

First of all, no one is being forced. Second, last I checked the majority of Americans voted for Barack Obama to be our President. Third… abuse of power? Again, does everyone have amnesia from the previous 8 years, or just the Obama haters? And finally, it is not a speech for the president to “justify his plans,” it is a freakin’ pep talk to our nations youth about education. From an official White House statement:

“The goal of the speech and the lesson plans is to challenge students to work hard, stay in school and dramatically reduce the dropout rate,” an administration spokesman said. “This isn’t a policy speech. It’s a speech designed to encourage kids to stay in school.”

Running the Numbers looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 32,000 breast augmentation surgeries in the U.S. every month.

This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. Employing themes such as the near versus the far, and the one versus the many, I hope to raise some questions about the roles and responsibilities we each play as individuals in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.

~chris jordan, Seattle, 2008

Among his fine work you’ll see:

410,000 paper cups, equal to the number of disposable hot-beverage paper cups used in the US every fifteen minutes.

28,000 42-gallon barrels, the amount of of oil consumed in the United States every two minutes (equal to the flow of a medium-sized river).

106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds.

125,000 one-hundred dollar bills ($12.5 million), the amount our government spends every hour on the war in Iraq.

One hundred million toothpicks, equal to the number of trees cut in the U.S. yearly to make the paper for junk mail.

One of his incredible pieces shows 200,000 cigarette packs to symbolize the number of Americans who die from smoking every six months. So 400,000 Americans DIE every year from cigarette smoking. In the name of national security and keeping us safe….. why are cigarettes still legal? I mean, approximately 3,000 were killed on that Tuesday morning in September and we waged war on terror. Where’s the war on tobacco?

Another piece depicts 65,000 cigarettes, equal to the number of American teenagers under age eighteen who become addicted to cigarettes every month.

Man, we are really not keeping Americans safe!!

Anyway, be sure to also poke around the rest of his website to check out his portraits from the wake of Katrina, a global version of Running The Numbers, and other fine stuff.

Save The Internet
because Network Neutrality — or “Net Neutrality” for short — is the guiding principle that preserves the free and open Internet. Put simply, Net Neutrality means no discrimination. Net Neutrality prevents Internet providers from blocking, speeding up or

Save The Music!
because kids should have access to instruments and music programs in their schools.